Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 183
183
Luke had thought his nausea was under control, but seeing... seeing all this... it made him want to double over and wretch where he stood.
There was blood everywhere; dripping down the stairs and splattered over the walls. There were even semi-coagulated puddles of the stuff seeping between the floorboards with tufts of fur lazily floating on their hardening surfaces. The entire place reeked of an old chopping block that had never seen a proper cleaning. It was a smell that crawled up inside your nose and stayed there.
Horrific though it was, the sight of all that blood only held Luke's attention for a second. There were Wolves in here, none of them quite as big as Banno, but pretty close. And they all seemed like... well, like they were on the verge of death.
"Hey, kid!" a lady Wolf screamed at him, making him jump. She had craned her neck back to look at him, and her upside down face coupled with all the blood-soaked hair plastered over her left eye made her look every bit as insane and violent as Banno ever was. "Get the hell out of here!"
Luke might have done exactly that if his feet hadn't been rooted to the spot.
"No, wait!" a brown Wolf said. It took a while for Luke to place him, even though they had spoken to each other not so long ago. It was Ander, but the last time Luke saw him he still had two eyes. Now there was just a thick patch of weeping gore over the left half of his face (which was all cut up and bruised, probably broken in several places, too, by the uneven looks of it). He was on top of the bedstone, apparently wrestling with -
The light fell across the shadow, but the shadow did not disappear. It was flesh and blood and teeth and claws, held together by hunger. It was Banno, and he was most assuredly dead. He had to be. There was no way in hell anything could look like that and still be alive - torn and shredded, with blood pouring from its mouth and nose, from its ears, from everywhere. And yet that thing was still moving. It was bucking and heaving, chomping down on Ander's arm like a snake with a broken back, acting on pure, base instincts, unable to stop biting even though it knew it was supposed to be dead.
Luke took a frightened step back, unable to comprehend the barrage of blood and violence bombarding his eyes. He had come here looking for his sister, but -
"Luuuke!" Ander screamed, not trying to rip his arm free of Banno's jaws at all, but rather pushing it farther down, pinning Banno's head against the... the haft of the pitchfork that had pierced his chest... and was...
By the gods, how is that monster still alive!?
"Luke, you have to go up the stairs!" Ander's face was an absolute contortion of pain and suffering. He could barely choke the words out. "Find the ladder! Release the brake wheel! Hurry!"
"Go, kid! Do as he says!" That came from a Fox with red fur, putting his shoulder to the grindstone. He wasn't getting anywhere, but seeing the immobile grindstone and the effort with which they were trying to push it drove their plan home. Luke understood exactly what they were trying to do, and he understood exactly why it wasn't working.
He didn't know how Ander knew about windmills, but he was right. It was the brake wheel.
Luke sprinted for the stairs, hugging his injured wrist to his chest and giving the bedstone a wide berth.
He took the steps two at a time, then nearly tripped over his own feet when he saw the grey Wolf halfway up, either dead or unconscious, he wasn't sure. Even though he could feel every second ticking by, this Wolf gave him pause. It was only the fourth one he'd ever seen, but it was so much smaller than what he was used to. This Wolf right here was probably only a tiny bit taller than Dad. Did that mean this was just a kid, like him? On a purely academic level he knew Wolves must start out as babies and grow from there, just like Foxes, but actually seeing one that didn't immediately strike him as some kind of monster caused a weird kind of double take in his head. It was like seeing a great big pair of yellow eyes staring at you from the back of a butterfly's wings, or chunks of hail falling from a summer sky. It was a perfectly natural thing, but something in your head tried to insist that what you were seeing didn't make sense, that it wasn't normal, that it was wrong.
Wolves were supposed to be cunning, cruel, animalistic killing machines, and yet here was one that might be no older than himself. Just a kid.
Wolves fighting other Wolves? Foxes and Wolves working together? Smoke from the mountain? War?
Just what in hell was really going on here?
Luke gave his head an angry shake and continued up the stairs. He didn't need to know what exactly what was going on. Just knowing that they were trying to put an end to that son a bitch who had tried to murder his entire family was more than enough for him.
He crested the top step and nearly tripped yet again. His breath caught in his throat and his eyes went wide.
"Valery!"
She raised her head, and the moment she saw him she came alive. She strained against her bonds and moaned against the rag stuffed in her mouth, trying desperately to talk.
Luke hurried over, yanked on the piece of string tied around her head and carefully pulled it out. It wasn't actually a rag at all, but an old piece of burlap bag, probably from this very mill.
"Lu-" Valery tried to talk, but was quickly overcome by a coughing fit. She hacked and spluttered while Luke struggled to untie her wrists with only one hand, yanking at the knots with shaking fingers. "Luke, where's Dad and Tim? Are they okay?"
"Tim is fine."
"And Dad?"
"He's..." Luke had just noticed the vixen tied up beside his sister, drifting in and out of consciousness. It was the same one Banno had carried in on his shoulder and, just like Ander, she now looked vastly different from before. Her face was all beat up and her stomach had a bunch of round puncture wounds in them, exactly like the bite marks around Valery's throat, except fresh.
Did that bastard actually try to... disembowel her?
The thought made him want to gag.
"Luke! What about Dad!?" Valery nearly screamed.
"Tim's taking care of him," Luke said, not exactly lying, but not quite answering her question, either. "Listen, Val, I'm going to untie you. I need you to -"
To what? he thought. She couldn't stay here, that was for darn sure, but where could she go? Back to where their father might be bleeding out all over Uncle Jon's carpet?
"What, Luke?" Valery asked, looking for guidance from her big brother, for something to do.
It was either stay here, in this place of death, where she might have to watch Banno's head get crushed like an oversized grain of wheat (if he didn't break loose and go on another rampage, that was), or go to their father's side, where it would at least be safe.
Luke yanked on the knots with his good hand and ripped them loose with his teeth. "Okay, Val, I need you to untie this vixen, then get back to Uncle Jon's house as fast as you can," he said, spitting the ropes aside. "I don't know if she can walk like that, but if she has trouble, you help her down as best you can. Don't go near the grindstones. Just hug the wall until you get outside, okay? And don't look. For the love all the gods, no matter what you hear or what that thing might yell at you, just don't look, okay?"
"But what will you do?"
Luke turned towards the opposite end of the ring, looking past shadowy bags of wheat and flour at the ladder going up to the tiny room in the topmost portion of the mill, where the brake wheel was waiting, perfectly still. But not for much longer.
"I'm gonna go do my part."
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